A few months after the duel, upon the spot where Hamilton fell, a marble monument was erected, surrounded with an iron railing. For many years the monument stood, and was visited by thousands every Summer; but after a while the railing was broken down, and the whole structure gradually removed, no trace of it remaining on the ground which it commemorated. The slab which bore the inscription was preserved, though broken, until about thirty years ago, in an old barn belonging to the family owning the locality, but now the lost relic has disappeared in the same mysterious manner as the rest. Amidst the tangled shrubbery and weeds, with not so much as a path leading to it, the spot can only be found through the assistance of a guide.

previously tried in Kentucky for fitting out an illegal expedition against Mexico.

Burr and Blennerhassett were both conveyed to Richmond, Virginia, and tried for treason. The trial was a famous affair. Chief Justice Marshall, of the U. S. Supreme Court, presided, and both the prosecution and defense were carried on by the ablest lawyers then in the land, and whose fame is now historical. Burr, also, was his own counsel in the case, and defended himself with vigor.

The court met at Richmond on the 3d of August, 1807, and, after a month's lapse, the jury returned the following verdict: "We, of the jury, say that Aaron Burr is not proved to be guilty by any evidence submitted to us. We therefore find him not guilty." Thus, eight months after his arrest in Alabama, he was once more free; but he was a ruined man. There had not been sufficient legal evidence to convict him of treason, yet he was morally convicted thereof before the country at large, the mere attempt at treason enveloping his name and person in an odium from which in vain he tried to extricate them during the remainder of his life.

He resolved to go West, but not to "grow up with the country," as orderly citizens delighted to do. No, his idea was of another kind—namely, to raise an army, invade Mexico, seize New Orleans, separate the Union, and erect an independent empire in the West, of which he was to be the chief. The scheme was a bold one, and if President Jefferson had not thwarted it at its inception, it might have resulted in serious damage to the Union. Burr had longed to make a tour through the West and South. General Jackson, then a prominent soldier, and General Wilkinson, commander-in-chief of the whole Federal army, and governor of the newly annexed territory of Louisiana, were his intimate friends, and pressed him to put his longing into execution. Thus pressed, he actually did make an extensive tour through the Southern and Western States. He fancied the ground was ripe, and that it would be an easy matter to enlist partisans in behalf of his ambitious plot.

He returned to Philadelphia, secured money and provisions, and then commenced operations in Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio for the raising of a volunteer force, ostensibly given out to be for an expedition into Mexico. Prominent men had entered into his scheme, and notably a wealthy man by the name of Blennerhassett, who lived on an island named after himself in the Ohio River, a few miles below Marietta. This eccentric man, of a romantic turn, was fascinated by Burr's offers to make him a great dignitary of the proposed empire, and readily joined his heart and purse in the venture.

There had been a party in the West, in 1796, favoring a separation of the Western States from the Union. General Wilkinson himself belonged to the party, and had entertained dreams of leading the revolt, and becoming, to use his own words, "The Washington of the West." It was he, however, who at last informed President Jefferson of Burr's schemes, whereupon the President issued his

From Richmond he went to Baltimore. One day, while he was dining with a large company at a friend's house, a military company, with a band playing a lively air, passed

pliment Burr, who, accordingly, rose from the table, threw open the window, and gracefully bowed. "Why, colonel," exclaimed a humorous fellow present in the room, "they are playing the 'Rogue's March,' with charged bayonets !" The windows were quickly closed, the guests returned to their wine, and voted the captain of the company to be a very impertinent individual.

Hearing that an indignant mob intended to give him a warm reception" on the street, Burr was, a short time after the dinner above referred to, compelled by his few friends to leave the city, in order to escape being hustled out. There was then no place in the United States where he could live in peace, or even safety; the entire republic was incensed against him, his oldest and best friends unanimously agreed to cut his acquaintance-in fact, he was despised by all Americans at home and abroad during the rest of his life. He never had the slightest respect of any one after his arrest and trial for treason. He went into exile to Europe during four years, but it availed him nothing; though mingling with eminent personages, he lived always in great pecuniary distress while in the Old World, and barely managed to keep from starving at times. After his return from exile he resumed the practice of law on the 8th of June, 1812, in New York, simply getting a friend to announce in a newspaper that "Aaron Burr has returned to the city for the practice of law, at Nassau Street." He had a very small tin sign, bearing only his name, nailed up in front of the house, and commenced business with his usual alacrity. Beginning with a cash capital of less than ten dollars, and that borrowed, he received for opinions and retaining fees in the course of his first twelve business days the sum of $2,000. The future appearing brighter to him, he wrote to his daughter, who had married the Governor of South Carolina, to visit him with her young son. She replied that her son was dead, but promised to sail from Charleston as soon as possible. A short while after she did sail, but was lost in the vessel that foundered at sea in a gale. This was a severe affliction to her father, for hitherto his sole reliance had been in her, amidst the bitterness caused him by his moral outlawry; her death, he was wont to say, had separated him from mankind.

He thereafter cared little for success. His legal services were at times in request, but the old claims against him were enormous, and his debts so numerous, that merely to defeat the attempts of his creditors to confine him to prison absorbed his income and tasked his powers. Many times he was kept out of jail by some wealthy friend giving bail for his appearance. Life became one incessant battle; his greater debts were never paid, and he soon became careless of the money he made, giving away to beggars and drunkards sums that might have appeased a creditor. One day, when rebuked for aiding men disgraced by bad habits, he replied: "They may be black to the world-I care not how black; they were ever white to me !"

As a general rule he was treated by the Bir with distant respect. He was still an antagonist in the law to be afraid of. On one occasion a lawyer of some note refused to be employed in an important cause in conjunction with him; the mover of the suit adhered to Burr. The opposing party waited with anxiety to hear whether Burr had accepted the case, and on learning that he had, made an immediate offer to compromise. It was known that Burr was "business incarnate," and had never lost a case in his life which he himself had attended to.

His conversation was witty and gay over a single glass of wine during the closing years of his life. He denounced no one for his own self-afflicted miseries. He used to assert that General Wilkinson had betrayed him, but against Jefferson he was not embittered, only disgusted with the Jefferson school of politics. He used to say, "Jefferson's leveling principles imported from among the Jacobins of France," were very absurd, and had done great harm. Of the republican form of government, with its "rotation in office," he expressed an ill-opinion, and said he was sure it could not last. One day some gentlemen were conversing upon the subject in his presence, when one of them chanced to use the phrase "expounders of the Constitution." At the moment a noisy crowd of electioneering Democrats was passing. Burr, who had stood silent for some time, with his hands behind him, holding his hat, pointed to the mob and said: "They are the expounders of the Constitution !" Hence his pretended membership of the Republican, or Jeffersonian, Party, when he was running for the Presidency, could not have been of the honestest. Washington he underrated and abused to the last, persisting in calling him a duliard in war and politics, in spite of the public verdict that Washington's dullness was infinitely brighter than the brilliancy of either Hamilton or Burr.

Astonishment was frequently expressed by people at the utter carelessness with which Burr would allude to passages in his past life which were generally thought to be infamous. General Scott was once asked in Albany, at a banquet, if he would "be introduced to Colonel Aaron Burr," then present. "Any gentleman whom you choose to invite to your house," replied the general, "I shall be glad to know." Burr entered, was introduced, the party sat down to whist until supper should be announced. Suddenly Burr looked up, and said: "General Scott, I've seen you before." "Have you, indeed ?" rejoined the general. "Yes," continued Burr; "I saw you at my trial" On the same occasion, Burr asked: "Why don't the folks at Washington employ General Jackson? I'll tell you why they don't give him a commission: he's a friend of minethat's the reason!" He was wont to converse with equal freedom of the duel with Hamilton. "My friend Hamilton-whom I shot," he would say. "Was Hamilton a gentleman?" asked a foreigner, in Burr's hearing. Sir, I met him," was Burr's reply.

He revisited the ground where the duel was fought, in order to oblige a young friend who wished to see a spot so famous. Leaving their boat at the foot of the heights of Weehawken, just where he had left his boat on that fatal morning a quarter of a century before, they climbed over the same rocks and reached the same ground. On reaching the scene, he placed his companion on the spot where Hamilton had stood, and went to the place where he himself had stood, and proceeded to narrate the incidents. The conversation turned upon the causes of the fight. He recounted the catalogue of wrongs he had received from Hamilton, and told how he had forborne until he had no choice except to slink from the political field or meet the calumniator and silence him; he charged Hamilton with being malevolent and cowardly. "When he stood up to fire," said Barr, "he caught my eye and quailed under it ; he looked like a convicted felon." Far from being an expert with the pistol when he killed Hamilton, as was alleged, Burr used to say, "I couldn't hit a barn-door.” As Burr grew older, the habit of indiscriminate giving grew upon him. When he received a sum of money, he made a kind of well of books for its reception in the middle of his large, crowded table; and then lucky was the applicant who made the first claim upon it. There were certain claims upon him which he could never resist. Old soldiers of the Revolution and their children; men who had lost by the failure and arrest of his expedition against Mexico; men who had stood by him even after he was under ban, had but to apply to him for assistance, to get his last dollar. He had almost an infirmity in getting rid of money. When he was seventy-five years old, a lady chanced to be sitting in his office one morning when he received a large amount of money in bills. She saw him put a fifty-dollar note between the leaves of a law-book and then place it on the shelf; the rest of the money he deposited on the centre of his table, with the usual result, viz.: begging visitors soon got it. An hour later, the lady saw him searching his pockets to see if he had sufficient funds for a trip to Albany, whither he was suddenly called. "Bless me!" he exclaimed, "I have no money, and have to start for Albany in an hour!" He asked the lady if she could lend him ten dollars-she said she could not. "But," she added, "colonel, what are you going to do with the fifty-dollar note in that book yonder ?" "Oh, I forgot," he replied. "I put it there this morning on purpose. What a treasure you are to remind me of it !"

Aaron Burr ended his eventful career on September 14th, 1836, in his eighty-first year, and was buried beside his father in the cemetery at Princeton. A small, plain monument was placed over his remains. He left no available property. A few pictures, a few mementoes of his daughter, who had perished at sea, several cart-loads of law-papers, some sacks of letters, a few articles of officefurniture, and a quantity of well-worn clothes, were all that remained of the countless sums he had received in his long career. Several years after his death, however, a reversionary claim which he held to some property fell to the lot of his surviving daughter, who was a girl only eight years of age. when he died. The last words he uttered on his dying bed were a request that his child's welfare be looked well after, and that especially she might be sent to good schools.

WHEN you speak evil of another, you must be prepared to have others speak it of you. There is an old Buddhist proverb which says: "He who indulges in enmity is like one who throws ashes to windward, which come back tɔ the same place and cover him all over."

Ir was in accordance with an established family custom that I went down to Ashbrooke the day before Christmas for a week's holiday. Ever since my elder brother, Tom, had married and owned a home of his own this had been expected of me, and though only twenty-six I considered myself a confirmed bachelor.

Tom was out when I arrived, visiting some patients-I forgot to say that he was a country doctor-and Carrie was in the kitchen, up to her eyes in eggs and flour.

I went straight to the room which was always called mine; hold a half-honr's high revel with my three little Vol. XIV., No. 2-16.

nephews and nieces, who rushed tumultuously to welcome me; and, having at length gotten rid of them, laden with confectionery enough to produce a family dyspepsia, I was proceeding to array myself for dinner when Tom came in.

"Glad to see you, old boy! Looking as well as ever only more so. Seen Carrie? Well, I've scarcely had a glimpse of her myself this past week! Engaged in the usual kitchen mysteries of the season."

We chatted on for some fifteen minutes, when the first dinner-bell rang.

"Carrie's sister, Dorothy ?" I repeated. "Why, how many sisters has Caroline got? There hasn't been a vacation that I have spent in this house in which hasn't appeared a new sister. How many more are there ?" Tom laughed.

"If you had inquired of Carrie herself she could have answered in the words of the poet's little maid, 'We are seven.' This one, Dorothy, is the youngest and the last." "Thank goodness for that. I hope she will soon be off Carrie's hands, like the rest, and then I shall have a chance of peacefully enjoying myself when I come here. I have a presentiment that, having failed in the attempt to bestow me upon one of the others, she will lay desperate siege in behalf of this last one. Dorothy! what a hideous name it is! Say, Tom, can't you make your wife understand that I am a confirmed old bachelor, or that I am engaged to a lovely heiress, cr something of that sort, which will induce her and Dorothy not to persecute me ?" "Not I," responded Tom, laughing. "It is dangerous to meddle with women in such matters. Besides, Carrie likes it, you see; and I don't want to spoil her fun, good little soul! She's a confirmed matchmaker, as you know."

"Ah, well, I must try to take care of myself. I wish I were anything but a young unmarried man with a comfortable property. Ever since I was nineteen I've had young women thrown at my head until I'm sick of it."

"Poor fellow! no wonder that under such a bombardment you should feel a little sore and sensitive. But here comes Carrie, all ready for dinner, and I must hurry."

My sister-in-law greeted me in her usual affectionate, effusive way, and passing her arm within mine, led me to the drawing-room, where, after a while, Tom joined us. "Where's Dorothy ?" said he, looking round.

"I don't know what detains her," replied his wife, with a deprecating glance at me. "Ah, just in time," she added, as a young lady slowly entered.

curve which bespoke of more than ordinary decision. She was perfectly unaffected; answered pleasantly when addressed by her sister or Tom, and smiled and spoke sweetly to the children; but the moment I addressed her she repelled me with a cold hauteur, and answered always as briefly as possible.

After dinner, Carrie, like a good mother, repaired to the baby in the nursery, and Tom lit a cigar and requested Dorothy to play. She complied instantly, and sang, with a sweet, clear voice, song after song, always saying, “Here is one of your favorites," or "Shall I give you this?" apparently expressly to let me understand that it was for him and not myself that she was singing.

I watched her as she sang, and observed the delicate outline of her profile and the fine contour of her head and bust.

Decidedly she was very pretty. After a while, I moved to a seat nearer the piano, and when she concluded, ventured a request for a particular piece.

"You must really excuse me," she answered, rising. "My voice is not very strong, and I rarely sing more than one or two pieces at a time."

Tom was dozing. I was glad of it, for I felt a desire to talk to this girl and find out what manner of woman she She disappointed me by gathering up one or two papers and leaving the room.

was.

Next day there was a grand dinner-party, consisting of the chief of our country neighbors. Among them I observed that young Squire Grantly-a fine-looking young fellow, fresh from European travel-appeared on very good terms with Miss Dorothy. And how different she was today from what I had seen her yesterday! What a pleasant light was in her blue eyes! what a sweet smile on her lips! How attentive she was to the old folks, and to the children—and, indeed, to every one but myself!

I often caught myself looking at her and wondering what it could mean. Then I began to wonder also if she could be engaged to this young Grantly.

Before the close of the evening I came to the conclusion that I had been a very great donkey in taking it for granted that Miss Dorothy would second her sister's

Miss Dorothy Lee acknowledged this introduction with a bow of the most chilling politeness. Her glance scarcely deigned to rest upon me, and she passed on to the sofa where little Minnie and Alice were stiffly seated, in very short skirts and very wide sashes, doing their best to keep their promise of being "good" if allowed to dine with us. She became immediately interested in the picture-book which one of them had.

Decidedly Carrie's youngest sister was unlike the rest of the "seven," who were all pleasant, lively, agreeable girls, even though somewhat commonplace.

At table I took a half-indifferent, half-curious look at her. I could do this without the least fear of detection, as she scarcely glanced at me, even when I spoke.

She was about nineteen, apparently-tall and finely formed, rather plump, very fair, with clear-blue eyes, fresh red lips, a dimple in chin and check, and glossy, gold-red hair rippling back from blue-veined temples.

So far, she was not unlike two of her sisters, now married-Kate and Lizzie; but Kate had been a merry, laughing hoyden, who rather tired me with her incessant chat; and Lizzie I had regarded as the type of graceful, good-natured, insipid indolence.

Dorothy, I could see, was neither thoughtless nor indolent. There was a great depth in the blue eyes, and her

line to throw us together, or to attract my attention to her young sister, had been promptly and effectually baffled by the latter.

She evidently regarded me with a sort of contemptuous indifference. The experience was entirely new to me, and I confess that I felt somewhat piqued.

After supper I danced the first set with Miss Gregg, "the country belle," as she was called, and then, as the second began to form, I found myself near Dorothy, just as Caroline came up.

"Arthur, how is it that you have not secured a partner, and here is Dorrie also unengaged'

Dorothy interrupted, with a quick light in her eyes and color in her cheeks:

"I shall not dance this set."

"The next. "I commenced.

"For the next I have chosen a partner," she answered, coldly. "You must remember that it is leap-year, and ladies are privileged to choose."

I felt that this was but a clever device to get rid of me without direct rudeness. But I was conscious of a queer little feeling, resembling envy, as I saw her the next set dancing with Grantly.

"Carrie," I said, next day, "do you know, I fancy your sister has taken a dislike to me? What have you been saying to prejudice her against me ?”